Careers advice for the middle-aged

This is probably a diversionary tactic but also a sincere request, because googling for this sort of thing takes you to a lot of horrible pages.

I'm 51, unemployed, and short on credible qualifications. My 30 year old pass degree in English Lit isn't really any use on a job application, and a lot of my skills and experience are in a field that I don't think I can work in any more. I know more about what I don't feel I can do than what I do. On the other hand I still think I'm pretty sharp and a quick learner.

Obviously this is far from the best time to be looking for a new job and right now I'm just looking for anything that'll pay my bills, but in the longer term I need to find some field of work that might be sustainable between now and my inevitable death before reaching retirement age which is receding further into the future anyway.

It'd be great if anybody has any thoughts or tips for getting into a new "career" - however loosely you wanna define that - for people like me who are no longer in the youthful go-getter category and probably never have been.

So this could also be a general thread for this kind of ish, or y'know, for piss-taking and shitposting, whatever works.

Thanks for listening, senescent ilxors.

hate to be the guy who says a short course in any aspect of IT would be a good step

but in my actual experience, it really would. my business degree had gotten me as far as data entry, entry level and wasnt getting me any further after seven years in the PS.

an 18 month bridging degree in comp science was a bitch ito pace but not hard or beyond me comprehension wise (and therefore you) and luckily covered a good mix of hardware, coding, systems, projects.

and coding isnt by any means the be all and end all, i do none of that stuff im a projects guy who wrangles software ppl- i just have a better idea of the business requirements than the latter (and a better idea of the tech limits than the business).

now tbf i was lucky to have a course like that available and just about within my means and time, but a judicious selection of three month modules in the right areas would limit even those resources youd need to commit to.

so look yeah essentially im being that guy but it worked for me so *shrug*?

luck

middle aged idk i was hitting my mid-30s so not old, but had started college late in the first place and was also looking at ten years worth of fresh young things hopping past me so not completely inapplicable to yr circs maybe

IT is definitely something i've been thinking about for a long time and yeah i should look at what's available - obviously funding might be an ish and i suspect there are a bunch of dodgy chancers running "courses" out there but thanks, definitely to be explored

One of the very few benefits of the current situation is that it will remove the stigma around mid-life career changes - simply put there are going to be A LOT of people in your situation and there are accessible opportunities for self-education and training that didn't exist even a few years ago. The government has made some courses free to access right now although I'm not sure how good they are or what the range is like.

Just browsing online courses tends to produce options paralysis in me but might at least give you an idea for paths that might be either interesting or useful/applicable, the latter is probably more important right now but if you can find a combination of both then great. I would probably prioritise anything that can be done remotely for obvious reasons.

xp ok im gonna be that guy a little more, then

you wont get accredited but theres a ton of free and pretty useful ito dipping yr toes on the likes of edx, you will definitely find enough to find out what might kindle yr interest as well as testing yr tolerance for online delivery/following of this type of stuff

loads of others, but ive used edx and can recommend

xp

yeah Matt this has occurred to me re: the post-rona world, and is part of how i'm feeling selfish bits of positivity.

This could very soon turn out to the busiest thread in ILX.

The world is changing, career changers are becoming more common

Even from prison

https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/developer-after-prison/

https://thehustle.co/how-one-man-went-from-a-life-prison-sentence-to-a-100k-engineering-job/

xp thats ok im currently on a seminar about robotic process automation we'll set up a process

for an hour i was like "no answers because my life is screwed" :D

but i hoped that was the bad depression voice wittering

Bookmarked

i have no useful advice to offer, but i do have good wishes and this glimpse of a better world, now long-extinguished

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EI24QqLWkAIu8_3.jpg:large

Also I did some career coaching a while back which ultimately came to nothing but one thing that was useful was the advice that when you're looking at options that appeal, to try and ignore or tune out the little voice in your head that goes "well I can't do x because I haven't got y skill or experience" where y is something usually totally imaginary or something that can be learned on the job or as a stepping stone on the way there.

I look into my skills wallet, and it's filled with blood.

Yeah, definitely bookmarked, I am a freelancer with very little in translatable skills, wondering what's still gonna be standing when the dust settles.

I keep having dreams where I'm doing my old job but I'm completely incapable of doing the most simple tasks like there is some force stopping me or I have forgotten how to do it. it might not sound nightmarish but these type of dreams are the scariest ones I have and obv reflect my innermost deep-seated fears!

that sounds plenty fuckin scary, and i reckon most of us will have had those fears tbh

The world is desperately short of people who understand human needs and can translate it into specs that can be built. If you want to dip your toe in something either along with IT or as a subject on its own; Human Centred Design is a great place to learn and to work.

Everything I do nowadays is worked through that lens. If it doesn’t make people’s lives better or easier then what’s the point.

If you can ignore the usual stuff, innovation as the new buzz approach has potential for a lot of the good stuff

I've been looking for a career change myself for more than a year now, so far my conclusions are

* CUP / Cambridge Exams do not want to employ me for anything, think this goes for the entire HE sector too, I am way too experienced for entry-level and not in the loop enough to get management jobs, really frustrating this, also if karma is a thing all HE administrators will be forced to fill out their fucking 30-page online application forms for eternity in purgatory.
* The jobs I want in archiving / broadcast / etc., things which I actually would love to do, do not even reply to me, ever. Guess everyone wants to do this stuff, and someone without a relevant degree gets their CV straight in the bin, however long they have spent writing detailed cover letters.
* Recruitment consultants, for all their faults, are my only real lifeline, I suggest getting in touch with them if at all possible.

Quality thread.

best of luck nv, and i'll probably be in the same boat as you post corona seeing as gatwick airport won't even exist this time next year if things carry on as they are. have had the same job for the last 15 years or so which i don't particularly like and that is badly paid but that is in my comfort zone of being p easy and therefore something i am capable of being competent/good at (night shifts of putting books on shelves then opening up early morning to serve customers). the only skills required are to show up on time, not be sick (okay this is luck not skill, no sick days in 15 years), to put things out quickly in the correct place and to help customers. basically stuff that any number of millions of post corona unemployed are capable of.

i haven't had an actual job interview for over 25 years and that gives me the fear tbh.

I'm an English major, and am now a software developer, so the transition is definitely possible of that's the direction you eventually choose. (I don't have any CS degrees, either.)

Get your CV out there on job boards. You never know what will turn up. I was getting zero response to shit I actually applied to for months (I am 48 and hadn't had an office job since May 2016) but out of the blue one day a recruiter emailed and said "saw your CV (and it wasn't even the *current* one - I had to send her an updated doc) and we think you'll be great for *job*" and...that's where I work now. I've only been here a little less than two months - started on March 16 - but it totally fell out of the sky and I'm extremely glad it did.

Also, you can bullshit your way through almost any interview. Most people who already have jobs are bullshitting about their skills - they think they're 10x better at what they do than they actually are, so as long as you can come across in an interview like someone other people could stand to be around all day, you'll have a good shot.

i'm comfortable with interviews tbh but i'm gonna need to redo my CV because most of the stuff i have done is not where i want to work going forwards. need to just emphasize the skill set differently i guess.

I'm an English major, and am now a software developer, so the transition is definitely possible of that's the direction you eventually choose. (I don't have any CS degrees, either.)

Ditto - in fact I'd say of software developers I know, a majority don't have CS degrees or come from a tech background

loads of orgs now thinking and planning for the big sprint into whatever the post restart world looks like, and it will be a bit of a gold rush. So if you've got things like project management / change /risk/ engineering etc experience I think there'll be some demand. + embracing remote working opens up the job market geographically as well which ain't bad for those of us living in a relatively inexpensive city.

I don't know what the britishes call "business analysts" but if you are good at working with ppl (which I am sure you are) are can get a grip on basic tech stuff, being the person who translates a organizations IT needs into requirements that coders can actually execute--that is a valuable thing ime.

being able to form coherent sentences in one's native language is also a valuable thing, not a thing I currently have atm it would seem

+1 for developing tech/computer skills in this downtime and using recruiters.

also, in every job, even if it's not your preferred job, you will learn something and/or meet someone new that may be valuable at some point later. So try to say yes to things you wouldn't normally.

try to have at least 2 people you trust, who are at about the same level professionally, review your cv.

following, in this career I was basically middle-aged six years ago

following
my teaching career may be coming to an end, at least as a career :( :( :(

Huh, I was going to suggest looking into teaching, or social work, or some other human-relating field. Us olds have a lot of things to teach the young.

Says the tech guy, I know.

My wife got a teaching credential and is working on her library science masters degree and has been an elementary school teacher/librarian for a few years. If you like books, teaching, or research, library work is pretty interesting!

Sorry I need to remove the word interesting from my vocabulary. It has been rewarding for her and she can't believe it took her so long to figure out what a good fit librarian was for her.

over here:

library science
data analytics
business analyst
change mgmt
risk mgmt

all v much in demand and the conversion courses dont always seem too onerous ito time, entry reqs, cost, etc

in order to manage risk we must first define risk. what is risk? risk is

I recently changed career at age 50 - admittedly a short hop from journalism to communications but a change nonetheless. Lots of work in comms, some of it well paid, some of it even interesting (I'm working for a public health NGO). I do think there are some advantages to being older - we come across as more confident, our formal writing skills tend to be a bit better...

Thanks for the feedback everybody, a lot more to think about than you get from the usual recruitment sites and their platitudes.

Hopefully this thread can keep going as a resource for everybody who needs it.

Best of luck to you NV. You know I've never forgotten your "plan" to just go to China and teach there, but this thread seems more sensible for making that career change happen. And I really hope you'll be able to find a new direction!

Bookmarked obv, no idea what I'll be doing in six months time as these times will probably fuck up the status quo.

It's a nuthouse in so many ways but teaching is absolutely an option. I retrained at 40 (with a Lit degree and MA) and the profession (lol) is in desperate need of good people and from the sense of what I read in here, they would chew their arm off for someone like you. It turns out kids do respond to misanthropic bald old fuckers who've worked on the dodgems and still don't know what they want to be when they grow up.

Best of luck to you.

i have issues with the education system having spent 10 years in FE and more years in adjacent areas but i'm not totally against the thought, just weighing options

Hate to be the guy to back up the guy saying a short course in any aspect of IT would be a good step but here I am.

SQL is a piece of piss if you have fairly good logical reasoning, and is a licence to print cash at the moment. There are way more jobs out there than people to do them as everyone is dashing to start using BI Analytics or automation, and quite often the people who apply have great SQL talent but terrible people skills. If you can combine the ability to pick up concepts quickly with not being rainman you are basically set.

I was coasting in dead end temp / contract jobs to fund my musical exploits until my early/mid 30's and ended up with a tiny amount of exposure to SQL via a bleak helpdesk job. I nabbed a training guide from the internet, learnt enough to get through a developer interview within about 3 months and managed to get a junior dev job at a small firm (at 36 so not so junior!). Since then I've jumped ship a couple of times with a healthy pay rise each time without feeling like work has got much harder, if anything the opposite.

No money or years of my life were spent on qualifications at any point, if anything I feel like I've cheated somehow. Its not for everyone granted, but if you have an aptitude for this kind of stuff its definitely doable. SQL is not glamorous stuff that genius dev kids go for, the teams are always full of 30-60 year olds so don't be put off by age if that is a concern :)

32, redundant in four weeks time, no idea what to do after a decade in retail management and an English/Journalism degree that felt useless even at the time and came with academic acclaim but no real applicable practical skills. Retail isn't an industry anyone would pursue in 2020 (I basically fell into it) so it's time to do something new. How do you even begin to figure out what your next move should be and how to get there?

Learn to code!

Surely a very good time to right now and path for career changers is definitely there

This may seem basic, but an aptitude test might make your potential paths clearer.

There are also tests to see whether you have the intrinsic logical skills to be a good coder. After 10 years at my place of work, I took one of these and scored 34/35, which led to 10 more years in the IT department.

the "learn to code" thing always seems too was for me. am I actually going to get a job because I did one of those boot camp things (which I can't afford to do in any case)

easy not was

the lack of direction in my career, the fact that I make less money in real terms (factoring in the different costs of living, different currencies, inflation etc.) at 36 than I did at 26, and how broke I am are the biggest issues in my life, and I cannot see a way out of this rut

Coding doesn't seem particularly secure if you're lacking traditional degree credentials - outsourcing and automation, etc. are going to hit the people from boot camps harder than the people from a major school.

I did a twist on the "learn to code" job advice by teaching myself assembly language as a hobbyist, then leveraging that, plus a community college tech writing certification course, into a technical writing job where a good grasp of what was going on inside a CPU was critical, but the main skill was writing ability.

there are so many industries that require explaining things in writing that employ mostly people that are not good at explaining things in writing.

people who are not good at writing do not know how to hire people who are good at explaining things in writing

boxedjoy, i'm sorry you're in this situation, it's super stressful imo. i would approach this by reaching out to anyone you can think of in your network who seems to be stably employed doing anything and basically use that as a list of options to explore. it can be really helpful to "stay open" to those occupations that people in your network do and look for opportunities that are related or at their places of work. it really is who you know more than what you know imo. i thought i was in this situation, and i basically convinced myself i needed to reboot as a copywriter. i managed to get a bunch of interviews for a ux copywriting position that didn't pan out, based on an uncle i hadn't talked to in more than a decade. then a position opened in my master's area (archives) with the state, and i managed to get that. i'm sure you're working on this already but if by chance you have any friends who do design, maybe ask them about sharpening your resume. ps you can sign up for a 7-day free trial of adobe cc. but beware, once they lock you in to a monthly subscription you can't cancel if you chose the cheapest option that requires a year-long commitment (i finally got those fuckers to cancel mine because of covid). anyway, good luck...

also, you're not middle-aged, you're young. i had to do this this year and i feel middle aged (i'm 38)

it really is who you know more than what you know imo.

as someone in their mid-40s who recently changed careers, this is really otm

thanks everyone!

I did one of those aptitude tests a few weeks back when the "learn to code" meme was doing numbers in the UK and - believe it or not - it suggested that there wasn't anything I was a clear natural fit for. The best it could recommend was going into social work, but I would never manage that because of my own history.

So far my immediate network has really come through for me - I'm drowning in links to jobs and people asking if they can introduce me to someone. I'm really appreciative of all of it.

I think part of the problem I have is that I'm simply not ambitious. Even when I was 17 and I thought I wanted to be a proper journalist I never saw myself wanting to move up the chain. I don't ever want to raise a family or anything like that. All I want is to pay my bills and have enough money left over at the end that I can afford to go to clubs/gigs/exhibitions and see my friends and have an easy, peaceful life.

I know someone who did a bootcamp in their 30s last year and she got a job this year in the middle of a pandemic. We hired someone from a bootcamp *this year* after covid hit. I also know people who switched career with no bootcamp but are self-taught.

I don't know anyone with traditional degree credentials. Milo may well be right that the oncoming automation onslaught will sweep us all away, but then we'll have bigger things to worry about

I;m about to make a move from copywriting/marketing jobs to social work. I've got a history with addiction and depression and the field is very open to experienced workers these days. At 42 I finally feel a purpose, a motivation that's different than "i need the money". Starting a 2 year study in February.

I think even pre-COVID the increase is real in employers recognising they need a more diverse range of backgrounds in people they can't necessarily get from folk who went straight into IT/coding at the earliest opportunity.